Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Texans tweet about brisket

Researchers at the University of Arizona combed through 3.5 million tweets from October 2013 to May 2014 to map out the food people had on their mind the most.

They sorted tweets by the state they were written in, and the verdict: Texans love brisket.

Of course, the study had a bigger purpose: researchers found that food language was a big predictor of each state’s obesity rate, diabetes rate, and political leanings. So states who tweeted more about Mexican or fried food were more likely to have a higher rate of diabetes than the national average, and more Republican states tended to have food-related tweets centered on work and home.

The researchers also found that people in Dallas (and the South in general) love lunch, and eating out on a porch.